‘I am very glad he carried you so well, John,’ said Mr. Neuchamp, at the conclusion of this antipodean Turpin’s ride; ‘but how did you speed in the last and most momentous stage?’ ‘Oh, _that_ was easy drafting enough,’ replied Mr. Windsor, who apparently had considered that portion of his matrimonial adventure which depended upon horseflesh as the really important and exciting part of the transaction. ‘I was safe and sound in Parramatta on the Thursday afternoon. I heard enough about the grand wedding for next day—but I never let on. Said I was off by sea to Queensland to look at some store cattle, and hired a trap, with a fairish horse, and a boy to mind it, which I drove down to the cross-roads, just about a mile from the “Cheshire Cheese.” There was an old woodcutter’s hut just inside the fence at the corner. So I left the boy there, and told him to hold the horse among the trees, and not to go away till I came—if it wasn’t till dinner-time to-morrow. Of course, I squared him right. He was sharp enough; them Parramatta boys mostly are. ‘Down I goes to the old house, and marched in quite free and pleasant like, to spend the evening for the sake of old times. There was Carry looking half dull, half desperate, like a mountain filly three days in the pound—as I told her afterwards—though she was among her own people, in a manner of speaking. ‘There was Homminey, and some other Hawkesbury chaps, full of their jokes and fun—my word! if I could only have gone in at him and his best man, a great, slab-sided, six-foot-three fellow, just about as scraggy as he was tallowy, I think I could have spoilt both their figure-heads—one up and the other down. ‘However, there wouldn’t have been any sense in charging the whole family, like a knocked-up bullock meeting a picnic party—as I once saw, and didn’t he scatter ’em!—so I put on all the side I could, and laid by for a chance. ‘First of all, I shook hands with ’em all round, and came the warm-hearted fakement. Said “I’d come to say good-bye; they mustn’t think I bore any ill-will—just on my way to the north for store cattle, passage taken and all—happened to hear of the wedding to-morrow, and thought I’d look in and wish ’em joy.”